HONG KONG, June 19 — China’s Commerce Ministry said today it had urged the United Kingdom to stop sanctioning Chinese firms, after Britain sanctioned five Chinese companies over their links to Russia.

WASHINGTON, June 19 — The United States (US) Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has referred a complaint against the popular video-sharing app TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance to the Department of Justice, alleging that they failed to protect children's privacy, reported the German News Agency (dpa).

WASHINGTON, June 18 — Boeing chief executive officer Dave Calhoun was grilled by United States lawmakers in a Senate hearing yesterday over the air giant’s growing safety and quality control crises.

ATHENS, June 19 — A 55-year-old American has been found dead on the Greek island of Mathraki, the police said on Monday, the third tourist death in a week following a period of unusually hot weather.

MANILA, June 18 — A Philippine Navy sailor suffered "serious injury" after what the country's military called "intentional-high speed ramming" by the Chinese Coast Guard during a resupply mission in the South China Sea.

WASHINGTON, June 18 — A current Boeing employee told congressional investigators that the company lost track of hundreds of faulty parts and may have ended up installing them in its 737 Max planes.

BANGKOK, June 18 — Thailand’s former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has been released on a bail of 500,000 baht (RM64,138) by the Criminal Court today after he was formally indicted for insulting the monarchy and charges related to computer crime in connection with comments made during an interview in 2015.

MELBOURNE/RIO DE JANEIRO, June 18 — Mining giant Brazil has big ambitions to build a rare earths industry as Western economies push to secure the metals needed for magnets used in green energy and defence and break China's dominance of the supply chain.

BANGKOK, June 18 — Influential former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a powerful backer of the ruling government, was formally indicted on Tuesday for allegedly insulting the monarchy in a 2015 media interview, a spokesman for the attorney-general's office said.

BRUSSELS, June 18 — Ursula von der Leyen was expected to secure informal backing on yesterday for a second term as president of the European Commission, which sets the EU agenda with legislative proposals, trade investigations and competition adjudication.

DUESSELDORF, June 18 — France captain Kylian Mbappe suffered a broken nose late on in his side's 1-0 Euro 2024 victory over Austria yesterday, the French Football Federation confirmed after the game.

JERUSALEM, June 18 — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dissolved the six-member war cabinet, an Israeli official said yesterday, in a widely expected move following the departure from government of centrist former general Benny Gantz.

BANGKOK, June 18 — Four high-profile cases involving key political players in Thailand are scheduled to go before the courts today, in the latest legal wrangling that could see Southeast Asia's second-largest economy plunged into a new period of uncertainty.

BANGKOK, June 17 — Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin confirmed that he tested positive for Covid-19 yesterday.

JAKARTA, June 16 — Minister of Communication and Informatics Budi Arie Setiadi said Indonesia has succeeded in blocking around 2,945,150 online gambling content in almost a year.

MANILA, Jun 16 — The Philippines filed a claim with the United Nations (UN) yesterday to an extended continental shelf (ECS) in the South China Sea, a waterway where it has had increasingly confrontational maritime disputes with China.

MAKKAH, June 16 — A total of 1,833,164 Muslims from all over the world are performing the haj pilgrimage this year, according to the General Authority for Statistics of the Saudi government.

LONDON, June 15 — Kate, Princess of Wales, waved to crowds and smiled broadly from the balcony of Buckingham Palace after watching a military parade today, in her first public appearance this year as she undergoes cancer treatment.

PARIS, June 15 — Demonstrations were expected in Paris and several other French cities today to protest the far-right National Rally’s (RN) surge in the June 9 European elections.

SINGAPORE, June 15 — Beaches on Singapore’s Sentosa island were closed today after an oil spill spread from a nearby shipping terminal to the tourist haven south of the city-state.